Arranged Marriage in America

There is a woman from India who works with my dad and since my departure for India three years ago, we have spent increasing amounts of time with her. I will call her Lakshmi for privacy purposes. Lakshmi moved from India to the United States about twenty years ago, when she first moved here to marry her fiancé who she had never met.

Now, Lakshmi has a daughter who is in college. This daughter has been raised in an Indian household with Indian parents, but she grew up in the United States. I decided to find what Lakshmi planned to do about her daughter’s marriage.

Lakshmi told me that she would like to arrange a marriage for her daughter to a boy of the same class and caste. This boy could be American, like her, or he could be Indian—in which case Lakshmi’s daughter would move to India to live with him and his family. Lakshmi has friends both here and in India who have already gotten their child engaged.

This past Thanksgiving break (a few days before I asked her about her daughter and arranged marriage), Lakshmi brought up this idea with her daughter subtly. She mentioned a few of her friend’s children of the same age who were already engaged, she also brought up my engagement. To this Lakshmi’s daughter replied: “That’s good for

them but I hope you don’t think I’m getting engaged.” She is resistant to the idea of arranged marriage, as seems reasonable for a girl brought up in the United States.

Lakshmi seems calm about this resistance, but it does not seem that this is the end of the conversation. Her daughter is still young. Lakshmi agreed that it would be possible to find the perfect man for her daughter: an upper class Brahmin, living in America, and studying to be a doctor, and yet things may not work. Lakshmi said that it would be better that her daughter marries for love than to marry a man who fits this criteria and yet he beats his wife or does not take care of her. While Lakshmi believes that arranged marriage is the right way, the most important thing is that her daughter marries someone who is going to take care of her and respect her.

***I took this picture in the state of Kerala. These girls were dancing on their roof until I came with my camera and they all got together to pose for me.

Seeing the magic happen

While in India, I was able to attend Pramod’s older sister, Supriya’s marriage. Supriya married a man who lives two houses away from their house and yet she had never spoken to him.

Supriya was 25 years old when getting married. Up until this point in her life she had lived in the same house, with her siblings and parents, her entire life. She had very little freedom to go out with friends or be independent. Every day she had to be home before 6:30, there were no sleep-overs, and there was certainly no interaction with unrelated boys of the same age—even into her mid-twenties.

Now, all of a sudden, her marriage is arranged and she must plan to be living somewhere else, separate from those who she slept next to every night for 25 years (due to living situations in their community, most families sleep side-by-side on the floor). Until this day her life has been pretty constant, she moved from school to work, it is now just her, her dad, and her brother (her other sister married shortly after their mother’s death), but nothing else is different. Then all of a sudden, everything changes in one day.

The day of her marriage, I saw her leave her house as a tired looking, teary-eyed girl who seemed to be terrified of the unknown yet to come. This is a very understandable response in my opinion. However this is speculation for though all these facts are true, I have no idea how she was feeling at the time. On the wedding day, I have pictures of her tired face changing from a scared child to an excited woman. Slowly her mood seemed to change and I have one picture from that moment her and her new husband met each other’s eyes and smiled together for the first time.

The natural response is to be scared of the unknown: moving to a new home to be with people she hardly knows is a new, different, and probably scary reality. However, Surpiya’s culture taught her throughout her life that this is what’s supposed to come for her and all girls. She quickly got over her fear and became excited of her new life to come.

***This is a picture from Supriya's wedding to her husband Swamy. The two people standing over them are Vedashree, Supriya's younger sister, and her husband, Manju.

Working women

In the culture of arranged marriage, a woman marries a man and moves into his house with him, his parents, any older brothers, their wives and children, and any unmarried younger siblings. It is her duty to care for all of these people. To cook, clean, and do the dependency work (caring for children, sick, elderly, etc).

I met a woman in India, Deepa, who lives with her husband, his mother and father, his younger brother and sister (both out of school, working, ready for marriage), and 4 year old son. She works as a receptionist in a college full time with a one hour commute there and back. Every morning she must wake up at least two hours before leaving for work to prepare breakfast (all meals there require extensive cooking—no cereal and milk for them), prepare lunch for all who stay at home and pack lunch for those who go to work, clean the house (culturally the house must be swept and prayer done to the deities before leaving the house in the morning), and make sure that her 4 year old son was up, bathed, dressed, and ready for school. After working a full day and another 1 hour commute, she arrives home and must then prepare dinner for everyone in the home. In addition, all of the women in her house are vegetarian and the men eat meat, so instead of forcing the men to eat what is being served, she must cook two different meals. She does all of this work herself even though she lives with five other adults capable of helping out, two of which are women who used to do this work until Deepa moved into their household.

***I took this picture on the streets Mysore.

Lecturing

During my first trip to India in 2005, I met Pramod’s family who really did not know what to think of me. They were all sweet but uncomfortable speaking English as well as uncertain how to treat me. I came into their lives as an outsider who, while open to their culture, did not know much about it.

Pramod’s sister, Vedashree, who grew up with the custom of arranged marriage, felt it her duty to protect her little brother from this strange American who probably won’t be able to take care of him as a good as an Indian wife would.

One day Vedashree took me aside so that the two of us could talk and began lecturing me on my relationship with Pramod. She told me that everything I was feeling for Pramod was not real, that it was just infatuation, and that it was not a proper impulse to act on these feelings. Dating is not appropriate in her culture (boys have much more freedom which is why Pramod was free to be out with me). They are raised believing that love does not come before marriage. Love comes after marriage after learning to live with a person and respect him and wanting to take care of him.

Vedashree told me that if Pramod and I wanted to get married, it would be much more serious than I knew because “in India, people do not get divorced as they do in America.” She assumed that because I was an American, I would take marriage more lightly and get a divorce at the first sign of trouble as if divorce were as easy and acceptable as going to a store.

Her lecturing me about my customs which she believed to be naiveté was hurtful at the time. I just did not realize that she was only following what she had been taught to believe all her life.

***This is a picture of Vedashree holding her son (taken in the summer of 2008).